Glorious Ashes

A short film by Bùi Thạc Chuyên that won third prize in the short film category at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.

In 1967, as the Vietnam War raged, a Vietnamese revolutionary guerrilla team became the U.S. military's top target—charged with safeguarding a secret group of intelligence agents at all costs.

Tai, a soldier in South Vietnam, had 2 wives living in 2 different places. When the war ended in 1975, he brought his second wife and her child to a new land which was littered with mines and bombs leftover from the war. Tai earned his living by removing the mines from the land and collecting the scrap metal.

The film tells the scary, haunting adventures of three medical university students who accidentally discover a species of wormwood that is made with human blood in an ancient wooden box containing a piece of withered tree and amulet. He placed it deep in a messy bookshelf in Professor Hoan Sinh's house. That is wormwood blood, a secret medicine of the Sang La people.

Soon after her wedding, newlywed Duyen's excitement begins to fade as she realizes her young husband is not only naive but overly occupied by his job and doting mother. As her marriage goes unconsummated and her emotional isolation grows, she reaches out to her closest girlfriend, Cam, who secretly desires her, but pushes her into the arms of a dangerous and provocative suitor. The resulting infidelity puts Duyen in a precarious love triangle, challenging her notions of conventional relationships and also the stability of her new family.

Bùi Thạc Chuyên travels around rural northern Vietnam to research about classical xẩm singing and its last surviving performer Hà Thị Cầu.

In Bình Thuận, a South Central coastal province in Vietnam, a former Republic soldier turned farmer went into clearing landmines for over ten years, reclaiming the soil for himself and others, generating also controversies around the legitimacy and safety of his practice.

A young policeman is determined to trace down the elusive Windy Devil Gang that has been wrecking terror and fear across the city. As the chase seems to know no bounds, the possibilities of discovery dissolve into infinity.